The upstairs room of the police station in Delfzijl was still large enough. But joining a diverse group at the iftar, the meal that breaks the fast after sunset during Ramadan, made me want more. The start of an annual tradition?
The Ommelanden-Noord team of the police launched a first for the North. Led by chief Rahim Sahin, the team invited representatives from various communities for an iftar. “As a police, we receive invitations to such a meeting every year. Now we thought, why don’t we give something back?”, Sahin welcomed the guests.
A first for the North
For years, the police in large cities such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam have been approaching groups with a diverse cultural background for a joint meal, when Muslims are allowed to eat and drink again according to the rules of their faith when the sun has set. For example, it is not unusual in Amsterdam for around 1400 people to come to the World Fashion Center for it.
We did not know anything like this in our region. No one should be surprised that Ommelanden-Noord, with Eemsdelta and Het Hogeland as working area, was the first to be there on behalf of the police on Friday. It fits in with the tradition of looking out for each other, which is rooted in this team.
An example, in addition to the usual, daily contacts? A few years ago, eighty officers from this base unit visited various communities in their area on a beautiful day in May for an extensive introduction. They visited the Turkish and Moluccan community, the azc, Ons laand ons lu, which helps earthquake victims, and Mothers United, a group of Antillean mothers.
Women from the mosque prepared the food
Corona threw a spanner in the works for such contacts. “But now it is time to pick up that network again. We can reflect on what connects us,” said Sahin.
And what connects more than a joint dinner. To do that, he said, some organizational barricades had to be broken down. “We looked at women from the mosque with love. They provide the catering.” They did that in a side room.
For example, there was now an extremely diverse group at the table, with representatives from the two mosques in Delfzijl and Hoogezand, including representatives from the Baptist community, the Brede School in Appingedam, the Cape Verdean community, and many more.
May be who you are, free to believe
In these times of confusion, mayor Ben Visser of Eemsdelta called being who you are and freedom to believe the foundations on which the Netherlands is built. “With love as the main ingredient.” On behalf of the municipality of Het Hogeland, his almost namesake alderman Mariëtte de Visser also listened (and ate).
Team chief Sahin had also invited writer, speaker and Islam expert Enis Onaci from Hengelo. Sahin: ,,We still knew each other from Assen. He thought Assen could be done from Hengelo. I first kept silent that he had to go to Delfzijl.”
Odaci, a traffic expert, told the guests that his life turned upside down on September 11, 2001 (9/11). “I didn’t know much about my faith until then. After that day I noticed that Muslims were suddenly viewed very differently. And I thought, what is that? Where does this come from? What exactly does Islam entail?”
And so new contacts were born
From there he tries to prevent the splitting, and to bring people from different backgrounds together, to knock down walls. He described this special iftar as a ‘crack in that wall, through which light breaks’.
Now, of course, this improvised dining room was already full of people eager to walk over the bridges that the likes of Odaci – and the local police – are building. Otherwise they wouldn’t be here. It’s nice to see how conversations at the table, once served, led to further contact. Like the one between local police officer Remco van Aalst, one of many more police officers in the room, and secretary Hizir Gunay of the mosque in Delfzijl, who was sitting diagonally across from him.
Van Aalst, who had also brought along the cheerful coordinator Wahabou Alidou from Colorful Het Hogeland, was the only one who had dared to raise his hand when Odaci asked who was not religious here. However, the conversation with Gunay was not about his disbelief, but about his hair. That was already pretty thin on top. And Gunay, of Turkish origin and 25 years old in the Netherlands, is not only a mosque secretary, but also a hairdresser. He studied Van Aalst’s head and knew something about it. He just had to come over. The agent gladly took his phone number.
PVV voters in the Turkish barber chair
Did Gunay notice a growing resistance to Islam in his environment? “Not at all,” he said. “You should always open not one but two windows. I get PVV voters in my business. I have very normal conversations with them. We have to learn to accept differences.”
It would help if that came from different sides. At least the food was good: the soup, the Turkish bread, the salad, the rice with vegetables and meatballs and the baklava went down as smoothly as the sun.